CIPPIC News

Canada's federal, provincial and territorial Information and Privacy Commissioners are calling for nominations for the Grace-Pépin Access to Information Award, which will honour and recognize the efforts of individuals or groups who have demonstrated an exceptional contribution to Access to Information rights in Canada. Nominees are judged based on the significance, implementation and impact of their work on the Canadian Access to Information right. The award could not be more timely, as Canada's aging Access to Information regime (which has not been substantially reformed since its introduction over 30 years ago) is in dire need of reform to bring it into the digital age.

The award also honours and commemorates its eponymous Commissioners, John Grace, former Information Commissioner of Canada, and Marcel Pépin, president and founder of the Commission d'accèss à l'information du Québec. It is typically presented during Right to Know week, celebrated each year in September. Nominations are due August 31, 2015​. More details on the nomination process and requirements are available here (FR). To submit a nominee, fill out this form here (FR).

Monday, June 15, at 6pm CIPPIC, Amnesty International Canada & the Ottawa Public Library will host a free public screening of CitizenFour. The documentary explores how former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden approached reporters Laura Poitras (who also directed the Academy Award winning documentary), Glenn Greenwald and others with a treasure trove of classified documents exposing the shear unprecedented scope and magnitude of the NSA's monitoring of the world's digital activities. This, in turn, launched an international debate about the protection of privacy in the digital age and the appropriate role of our foreign intelligence agencies.

Today marks the two year anniversary of the day the Guardian first reported on an NSA program that mandated Verizon and other US-based telecommunications companies to hand over metadata on all phone calls (domestic and foreign) on a regular basis in order to populate a metadata base that it could data-mine at will as part of its foreign intelligence program. The story sent ripples around the globe, and last week the US congress greatly restricted it by limiting the NSA's surveillance powers for the first time in decades. But the expansive metadata program, it turned out, was just the tip of the iceberg as a string of revelations from Snowden's files followed, each more staggering than its predecessor and confirming privacy advocate's worst predictions (CJFE hosts a searchable archive of these). We have also learned much about Canada's complicity (by its participation in the Five Eyes intelligence partnership with the US, UK, Australia & New Zealand) in creating this global web of surveillance. The film is a must-see for any privacy advocate, as well as for anyone who wants to learn about Snowden's experience or how our communications networks are monitored. Join us June 15! More details after the jump or download the event flyer

The Federal Court of Appeal issued its ruling in Bell Canada v. Amtelecom, 2015 FCA 126, which challenged the implementation of the CRTC's wireless consumer protection code. The Code was put in place by the CRTC out of recognition that Canadian customers of mobile services were not adequately protected by the existing regime. It sought to improve the state of affairs by granting customers comprehensive rights, overseen by the CCTS, including an important provision that limited service providers from locking Canadians out of the wireless market for three years at a time and thereby hindering competition. The protections in the Code were to apply to all customers two years from the day the Code was issued, including to those customers who were still locked in to pre-existing three year contracts. However, a number of providers appealed the decision, arguing that the CRTC lacked the power to protect customers until their existing contractual terms expired. Specifically, these Appellants argued that by restricting the length of wireless contracts to two years and limiting the penalties a wireless provider could impose onto customers for switching providers early, the CRTC impermissibly interfered with vested rights retrospectively by preventing them from recovering the cost of subsidized mobile devices.

In its arguments to the Federal Court of Appeal CIPPIC, representing OpenMedia, argued that the Code was actually future-facing (not retrospective) and that, regardless, the CRTC had the regulatory authority to interfere with past vested rights. The switching costs imposed on customers for moving to another provider early -- out of frustration with the service or because better deals emerged in the market -- were in reality penalties imposed on customers for future actions. This is borne out by the record of the proceeding, where a number of service providers testified that these penalties were a means of minimizing churn (preventing customers from moving to a competitor) not a means of recouping mobile device costs. Many of these penalties exceeded the value of any device, which is the reason the CRTC regulated the amount of early termination fees, forcing providers to tie these to device subsidies. More importantly, the CRTC is entrusted with overseeing a comprehensive regulatory regime that requires the balancing of complex policy objectives in a highly specialized environment. It would be impossible if not impractical for the CRTC to carry out its task without the ability to interfere with vested rights. In a carefully thought out decision, the Federal Court of Appeal found that the Wireless Code did in fact interfere with vested rights retrospectively, but that the CRTC was empowered to do so as long as it acted reasonably which, in this instance, it did. As a result, all Canadians, including those who are currently stuck in three year contracts, will be able to benefit from the Code's protections as of June 3, 2015. This includes the ability to leave a service contract without penalty 24 months from the day the contract began. For more information, see our resource pages on the Wireless Code and on our intervention in Bell v. Amtelecom.

CIPPIC has joined over 65 civil society organizations from around the world in an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg regarding its Internet.org initiative. Internet.org is Facebook's portal for mobile Internet access in developing countries. The portal is essentially a mobile app through which individuals can access other Internet sites, after first passing through Facebook's servers. The portal is zero rated, meaning that Facebook has entered into deals with wireless providers around the world that exclude Internet.org usage from data charges. While Facebook presents this as an altruistic initiative designed to get the next 3 billion Internet users connected, many have questioned whether it is truly altruistic or simply an attempt to place Facebook at the centre of the future Internet, establishing it as gatekeeper to downstream content and innovation. Meanwhile, the initiative detracts from other charitable efforts designed to provide true connectivity capacity in developing countries and, as domestic telcos are forced to shoulder the costs of the initiative, it is not clear what benefit Facebook provides to developing countries at all.

Regardless of its motivation, Facebook's Internet.org leaves much to be desired. Where it is active, individuals already think of Facebook as 'the Internet'. However, the Internet provided by Facebook is a highly curated environment, which only allows sites pre-approved by Facebook that operate on Facebook's terms. In this sense, it threatens the expressive and innovative force of the Internet, which has always relied on the capacity to innovate and express without permission. It is, indeed, this 'innovation without permission' model that allowed Facebook itself to supplant MySpace as the world's leading social networking site - Facebook's ability to reach its audience was not dependent on MySpace's (or anyone else's) permission. Additionally, all Internet.org traffic passes through Facebook's servers, raising concerns it will in time feed into Facebook's broader profiling activities while acting as a one-stop hub for state censorship initiatives. Internet.org simply comes with too many strings attached.